NYC lacks a North Star to guide its land use

Views on the issues with ULURP, member deference, and discretionary decision making

Back in March 2022, NYC City Council member Julie Won put out a list of requirements that needed to be met before she would begin to evaluate the development proposal for Innovation Queens in her home district. Innovation Queens would build approximately 12 luxury high rises in Astoria Queens, delivering an estimated 5,400 jobs for ten years and roughly 2,843 new apartments to an area currently occupied by warehouses. The project would cost an estimated $2Bn and would require a rezoning since the current land use does not allow for residential use.

When developers propose changing zoning codes to build large projects it means going through NYC’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) to get approvals. Sparing you the complicated flow chart that exists online (here if you want it), the ULURP basically means that in a span of at least 150 days, all the below parties, in the below order, get to comment and introduce objections and changes to a developer’s plan:

• Local community board

• Borough president

• City Planning Commission

• City Council

• Mayor (mostly veto power)

Going through ULURP means connecting local communities with the developers who plan on dedicating several years to build new properties there. This is meant to reduce friction between the residents and the developers by making sure developers take into consideration the needs of residents in the community – like say open space, or an urgent care facility. This is done to the benefit of the community, and it improves the chances developers get their projects passed. Win, win. As an example, the Queens Borough President, Donovan Richards, just submitted his comments on the QNS Innovation project and this will serve to better align his constituents’ interests with those of the developers.

He pointed out that there wasn’t enough affordable housing being built as part of the project, a common refrain by NYC officials. His most important demand is that the number of units considered affordable be doubled (from 711 to around 1,400 units), and that the actual income thresholds for those ‘affordable’ units be lowered, down to even 30% AMI (Richard’s full text response available here).

After his comments are considered, the City Planning Commission will review the proposal and then the City Council will take its turn submitting recommendations. Because of the length of the process, it is unclear if Richards expects his demands to be fully met, or if he is beginning a negotiation dance that often happens between NYC officials and developers. According to The Real Deal, it’s common for developers to leave room for negotiations in their proposals to allow elected officials to claim victories and look good for the communities they represent.

Introducing a half year process to question whether new apartments should be built in NYC runs counter to NYC’s goal of creating more apartment units to alleviate the affordability crisis. The process is too long. Further, the City Council observes a policy of deferring to the local member’s opinion on real estate developments. This is called member deference and has been contentiously discussed. When council member Kristin Richardson Jordan shot down the One45 project, a development in East Harlem, the developers behind the project withdrew their application for a rezoning because they knew if Jordan rejected the proposal it would be very difficult to obtain City Council approval for the rezoning and ensuing ULURP. This leaves important policy decisions that effect hundreds of thousands of NYers in the hands of a single person. Maybe giving the local council member stronger voting power in their district is appropriate but allowing them to make decisions unilaterally like an executive may not be for the best.

Examples where member deference has defeated large-scale re-developments in the last 3 years:

• One45 – 917 new apartment units

• Industry City – 1.4M square feet of development

• Your LIC project – 12 million square feet of development

ULURP takes too long, and member deference means projects aren’t approved democratically – but is there an even bigger problem here preventing developments from getting started? Why is every large re-zoning subject to so much questioning after it has been presented?

If criteria were agreed upon before the introduction of a new project, it would save all stakeholders some time. Getting local residents’ ‘soft’ approval before introducing a plan would take a lot of friction out of the system. In other words, NY needs a North star to follow. If Adam’s housing agenda identified a specific number of units that needed to be built, named some key neighborhoods, and identified the acceptable AMI levels, this could be used as a starting point to create a framework for what happens when re-zonings are requested. A comprehensive plan would limit the need for political dances and make the art of real estate development more of a science, less who you know. The result could be a more expedient pathway for large scale projects to get approved or rejected. This in turn would offer policy makers greater visibility into development pipelines and enable them to respond more appropriately to the needs of NYers. NY desperately needs more affordable housing. Officials should be open to considering different approaches to get there.

See part I of my discussion on land use here

Sources: Bisnow, The Real Deal,  Patch

Originally published on August 15th, 2022